DAVE DESTROY THE GAME
by Daliastarr
Summary: "If this was the universe's sick indulgence in cruel irony, then Dave was going to swear off all things awesome and satirical and forever walk the path of the straight and literal…" The survivors of Sburb vowed to prevent the game from being played ever again, but in a small farmhouse on Gallifrey Sburb has risen again. Oneshot. Warning!: Some Crude Language


AN: Hello Everybody. Some of you are probably wondering why I'm posting a new story when I have multiple others still left unfinished. Well, I have a good reason. I'm currently in a class that studies fanfiction and fanculture, and we had an assignment to create a fanwork of our own. This is the result. We were highly recommended to post our works online, and I certainly didn't need to be asked twice to do so. This is also meant to be a companion piece to a larger work I've had planned for a while. That work won't be published for some time, but this will give you all a quick sneak peak into that work.

Warning: Small amounts of crude language!

I hope you all enjoy! Please review! There is no greater form of flattery to me as a writer that to receive constructive criticism with any compliments you may have.

-oOo-

Dave Strider was nearly eight billion years old when _the game _appeared on Gallifrey. Dave was proud to say he looked really good for someone who was literally older than the universe. In fact, he still looked 16. Apparently, in addition to a sweet set of magical red pajamas, god tier had perks like indefinite immortality after _the game _ended. Dave still wore his god tier pj's. Most of the survivors did. He liked the outfit not just because of its sick cape and how it complimented his dark sunglasses, but because it always made him look cool, cool and collected. He liked to look cool and collected, especially when he was stressed, and there was nothing more stressful than _the game_.

This was the fifth time _the game_ manifested in this fledgling universe. The first three times didn't really count because there had been no life in the universe yet and; therefore, _the game_ could not be played. The last time had been a real clusterfuck though, because _the game_ had somehow wound up on the one planet in the entire universe inhabited by an intelligent species; and it had taken three god tier survivors nearly two days to collect and destroy every copy that had been produced. They were lucky no one tried to play _the game_ in that time, otherwise they would have lost the universe.

No one knew why _the game_ appeared as often as it did. Kanaya suggested that perhaps the universe was trying to fix itself. This universe was the result of five individual game sessions and three different species. None of these sessions had technically finished _the game, _and many were never viable sessions anyway. It stood to reason that the product of these games, this universe, would be fundamentally flawed in some way, and _the game _would try to mend itself. No one had yet found a frog temple, where the code for _the game_ was hidden, but copies of _the game_ kept randomly appearing even when there wasn't anybody around to play. It had Dave and the others scrambling around like madmen, trying to find every copy before it was played.

Dave and the others had vowed, on the day they arrived in their new reality, when it was still too hot for light to shine and matter had yet to pull itself together, that _the game _would never be played again. And for nearly eight billion years they had stuck with that decision, which was why Dave Strider, Knight of Time and survivor of _the game_, traveled from the void all the way to a small planet with a burnt orange sky, silver trees, and two suns: to make sure _the game _was erased from all existence.

He arrived in a wide orange field, on the outskirts of a large city dominated by buildings that looked to be about fifty stories tall. They were not the biggest buildings Dave had ever seen—the towers of Derse had been especially tall, stretching nearly two hundred floors high—but they were the largest anyone in this universe had ever built so they were damn impressive. Dave turned away from the city, however, walking instead towards the small farmhouse one hundred yards behind him. Not for the first time, Dave thanked the highest heavenly authority out there that Terezi survived the final battle and that her seeing abilities allowed her to know when and where _the game _would appear.

The farmhouse was only two stories tall, made from the silver wood that grew everywhere on this planet. The wood was cracked and warped; the walls were flimsy; and the glass in the windows had thinned at the top. This world had already evolved far beyond wooden houses. This building was now probably nothing more than some little alien cool dude's playhouse. The inside of the building was slightly nicer. There was electricity and plumbing, and every room was sparsely decorated with furniture, but a thin layer of dust covered everything in sight; the dirt was only disturbed in small isolated areas where someone must have spent time recently.

Dave searched the downstairs first: no game. The upstairs was only one room which had been outfitted into a game room. The only furniture in the room was a single chair, and a television-like device propped up against the far wall with some kind of game console hooked up to it. There was nothing that looked like a computer anywhere in the small house; but technically there was nothing in _the game's _instruction manual stating it had to be played on the computer. Dave found the discs in a stack of games for an "Etara" game platform. _The game_ was exactly how he remembered it: two discs inside yellowing paper packets, each labeled with a blue house logo and the most dreaded word in the universe: Sburb. Crisis averted.

"What are you doing?"

Shit. Dave spun around, hiding the discs behind his back, under his cape. Standing behind him was a little boy.

Damn. The kid couldn't be and older than six. He had messy black hair and blue eyes. Dave's chest tightened, and he had to swallow something unpleasant back down his throat, trying to maintain his poker face. The kid had his arms crossed, and was glaring something fierce.

"That's mine." The kid screamed. He ran at Dave, clawing at his arm that held the disks, trying to retrieve the game. Dave instinctually held the discs above his head which, because Dave was so tall, kept the game far from the kid's reach. "You're stealing! Give it back!"

"Whoa, slow down there." Dave pried the kid off him with his one free hand. "I'm just going to borrow this game for a bit. No need to make me your personal jungle gym."

"No!" The little Gallifreyen shook his head violently. "I found that game, so I get to play it first."

The kid looked quickly at the discs and then back to Dave. His face contorted, he pursed his lips and went cross-eyed. "If you want to play the game that bad, you can borrow it when I'm done."

Then the kid erupted into a large smile that crinkled his eyes, and Dave got a view of two tiny buckteeth.

If this was the universe's sick indulgence in cruel irony, then Dave was going to swear off all things awesome and satirical and forever walk the path of the straight and literal, because fuck, if that wasn't the face of John Egbert smiling up at him, ready—as always—to play _the game. _But John wasn't playing the game anymore; John was sitting in his home in some dream bubble out in the veil where no one could reach him, chatting up Jake and Jane and watching shitty Nick Cage movies and reading terrible troll romance novels and practicing his prankster's gambit and just doing all the other things one does when confined to the physical manifestations of your memories for all eternity. Because not everyone survived _the game._ Most sessions, no one does.

Dave swallowed hard to keep his voice from cracking. "Planning on playing this with any friends?"

"Nope." The kid popped the "p." "There's no other copy of the game, so I'm going to finish it all by myself.

Dave laughed. A six year old playing this game by himself, a dead session, he definitely would not survive; and if he did, no one else would. Dave remembered all too well how the last dead session ended.

"I'm afraid this game isn't one you can just solo, and it's definitely not for little kids." Dave said.

Dave stored the discs, which were still being held beyond the kid's reach, in his sylladex. The young Gallifreyen seemed to be contemplating trying to tackle the older boy, but Dave wasn't about to take any chances. He wasn't about to let the boy get his hands on _the game _again. There were a few seconds of silence where the two boys stared at each other, Dave daring the kid to move and the kid daring Dave to try and leave.

The kid spoke first. "Do you think _you_ can beat the game if I can't?"

Dave smirked. "Ya. _If _I had help."

"What if you helped me?"

"Not going to happen kid."

"Why not?"

"You don't have the right skills."

"Skills?"

"Ya, skills, and I'm not talking about your basic game controller hand-eye coordination, no I mean martial arts, sword fighting, crazy time shenanigans: that kind of stuff."

"We're talking about a videogame, right?"

"Yes, but trust me, you'll need them."

Dave waited as the kid hung his head in thought. "I don't know about time shenanigans, but I have the mutation."

"Mutation?" Dave eyed the boy warily. Dave hadn't heard about any mutations on Gallifrey, but he didn't think the kid was talking about a sixth toe either.

"Ya, the mutation," The kid stared at Dave as if he had won the prize for stupidest question ever asked, which, in all honesty, he might have. "The one that's been spreading over the past century. I can see time. I can tell when the past can be changed, and when it can't. I can see the possibilities for the future, and when something has to happen and nothing in the universe can stop it. Does that count?"

"Uh huh." Dave raised one eyebrow, impressed but skeptical.

"I can even see your timeline. It's weird, like a ball of string that got twisted, tangled and cut and then pieced back together. Everyone else's has been more like a straight line. Why?"

Dave stared at the kid in shock. He'd never heard of anyone who could see a person's timeline before. "Oh my Gog, you're serious? Wow, you're like a freakin' mini Lord of Time. You just live right there in the middle of the time stream and watch the universe spin around you. If you learned to travel through time you could mold history like a jar of playdough, rip, cut and shape time into your masterpiece; and when you're done you just mash it all back together and reshape it. Forget creating stable time-loops, you're spidey senses tell you when the past is so flimsy it can be changed with the drop of a pin. Move over English, because there's a new time lord ready to rule existence, and he's barely out of his training wheels."

Dave's rant seemed to calm the little Gallifreyen down, and the kid began laughing. Dave laughed with him. Dave placed his hand on the kid's shoulder. "You don't need to play this game. You already have everything it could possibly give you".

"Even sword fighting skills?" The kid joked.

"Probably safer to find a teacher for that one, kid."

"Well, I'd still like to play the game," the kid held out his hand expectantly. Dave swatted it away.

"No. It's too dangerous."

"It's _just_ a game," the kid's face was beginning to turn red, "_And_ it's mine."

"Sorry, but the answer is still no."

This conversation was running itself in circles, and arguing with the child was just wasting time. Dave motioned a quick goodbye at the boy, then walked past the kid toward the door. The kid tried everything to keep Dave from leaving. The kid screamed and cried and pulled at Dave's clothes. Dave simply ignored the kid's protests; he ignored the screams and the crying; he even ignored the harsh tugging on his cape. Dave just kept walking toward the door. Then he felt a sharp pain as a blunt, small object hit him in the back of the head. Dave turned around. The kid had chucked a game controller at him. Exhausted of his screams and tantrums, the kid stood there puffing out loud breaths of air while his chest moved quickly and visibly up and down.

Dave could ignore insistent pestering, but he drew the line at bodily harm. He marched right up to the kid, and he didn't stop until the kid was forced to step backwards. He could feel the kid's breath on his cheeks, fogging up his shades. The kid's skin was now a burning red, flushed from the anger and stained by the steady stream of tears. His jaw was clenched so tightly, the strain was visible in his face, and there was the beginnings of a snot flow hanging from his nostrils. The kid's eyes stared up at him showing only one emotion: pure, unadulterated hatred. It was the look Dave himself wore when Lord English put seventy-eight rounds of ammunition in his best friend's chest. It was the expression John Egbert himself had displayed as he knelled beside Jane's lifeless body only seconds before he was gunned down by the immortal demon. It was a look Dave had come to associate only with _the game_, and he had never expected to see it again.

"If you want to play the game that badly, then fine, you can. I'm sure as hell not going to stop you," Dave lost his cool, "But you have to come get it from me first. I'm going to destroy it; I'm going to snap these disks like a toothpick. So, you're going to have to stop me before I do. You might have all these cool abilities, little Timelord; you think you can manipulate time, then learn to do it. Come back and find me, right here, right now, but when you're older. I'll be waiting."

Then Dave stormed out of the little farmhouse. The kid did not try to stop him. The kid did not even move. He just stood there, hyperventilating and piercing Dave with his stare. Standing in the meadow, Dave was slightly worried the kid would appear, older and still blissfully unaware of exactly what game he wanted to play. But, of course nothing happened. In the end Dave's encounter with the little child on Gallifrey would only be remembered as a semi-humorous anecdote about a child who was robbed of one of the rarest games in the universe by a pajama wearing, sunglasses clad, crazy teen. Would that Dave could be a fly on the wall when that story was retold in twenty years.

Satisfied that he was not in fact going to be attacked by an older version of Egbert's Gallifreyen clone, Dave summoned his turntables and slipped silently into the time stream. Perhaps, he had been too harsh on the kid. It wasn't like the boy knew what was happening. And, his time powers were really sick. If there really was a race of people able to understand the timeline as easily as Dave could, then it might be worth another visit to the red sky planet. Dave could be their patron god or whatever. Vriska had done something similar with those creepy spider aliens a few million years back. It could be Dave, Knight of Time, and his followers, the Timelords, traversing time and space serving up a three course meal of vigilante justice to anyone in need.

Speaking of vigilante justice, Dave needed to message Terezi. Messaging Terezi while time travelling was easy, because she now permanently lived in the void, where time did not flow, and the time stream had its own set of weird rules.

\- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC] -

TG: mission complete

TG: one possible casualty in the form of a 6 year old alien

TG: but I got the disks

GC: GOOD

GC: W3 W1LL D3STROY TH3 G4M3 UPON YOUR 4RR1V4L

GC: W41T

GC: YOU K1LL3D 4 K1D?

TG: nah, just a sad case of broken dreams and a shattered ego

TG: nothing a box of aj wont fix

GC: GOG

GC: WH4T 1S 1T W1TH YOU 4ND TH4T HUM4N 4PPLE DR1NK

TG: its a gift from god

GC: W3LL R3G4RDL3SS YOU N33D TO HURRY UP

GC: YOUR BROTH3RS ROBOT M3OWB34ST IS T34R1NG TH3 M3T3OR 4PP4RT

GC: 1F 1T G3TS 1NTO ON3 MOR3 BOX OF MY CH3RRY R3D CH4LK I W1LL NOT B3 H3LD R3SPONS1BL3 FOR WHO3V3RS BLOOD G3TS SPL4TT3R3D 4CROSS TH1S GOG FORS4K3N ROCK

TG: haha im on my way

TG: try not to go all juggalo on us in the meantime

GC: NO PROM1S3S

\- gallowsCallibrator [GC] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -


End file.
